Music

Death By Stereo is the punk rock band that metalheads dig, because it has an edge — aggressive guitar riffs, and hard and fast drumming that’s typical for hardcore punk bands such as A.F.I., and Shai Hulud. But while Death By Stereo sounds chaotic, its lyrics are generally serious and…

There won’t be a better show in Phoenix this summer than this one. That’s because these three bands realize a concert is meant to be something more than vomiting up tracks from their latest slab. All three are driven by an appreciation of rock’s theatrical qualities. This goes double for…

This fourth collaboration between Rupert Huber and Richard Dorfmeister is a family affair — the letters J.A.C. represent newborn sons (Joseph, Arthur, Conrad; Huber’s wife had twins). This could clue us in to the lullaby-sounding quality of “Heidi Brühl,” with slightly polished guitars creating an airy soundscape behind Samiah Farah’s…

Most people agree that the former Common Sense has few peers on the mic. But his last album, 2002’s Electric Circus, was an intermittently exciting exploration of acid rock that enraged hip-hop purists, and today’s cutthroat industry doesn’t extend many mulligans for experimentation. Like any boho artist, though, Common wants…

You’d think having the biggest-selling local CD in 2003, The King of AZ, would have this MC resting on his braggadocio. But it’s 2005, and Atllas is champing at the mic — literally. As the title song screams out, “Hunger and Starvation” is not some Neverland faux ballad about feeding…

Trance-music don Christopher Lawrence is perhaps the best-known name in dance music to come from the United States, a country with no shortage of topnotch DJ talent. Consistently ranked alongside the U.K.’s hottest jocks in DJ Magazine’s annual poll, in 2004 Lawrence checked in at number seven, placing higher than…

Have you ever dreamed of being on stage singing with your favorite band? Sure you have. Pretty much everybody dances in their underwear, crooning into a hairbrush/spatula/spoon — whether they’d admit it or not. Some of the punk-rock elite decided it’d be hella fun to let fans live out their…

What to make of the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to Fuck” done bossa-nova style with vocals by Camille, a uni-monikered songbird who twitters like a tipsy socialite? Is this concept, stretched to album length by the production team of Marc Collins and Oliver Libaus, a silly gimmick? A wry bit…

The last time Dan Snaith came through town, he was operating under a different moniker: Manitoba. But thanks to the threat of a lawsuit by grumpy ol’ Handsome Dick Manitoba (of the NYC punk band The Dictators), the Canadian-born tunesmith has changed the name of his outfit to Caribou. It’s…

A dozen years ago, preparing to make his solo break from N.W.A, Dr. Dre recruited a 20-year-old onetime drug dealer to rap aside him on The Chronic. That was the cauldron that forged rap’s most colorful character this side of Flava Flav, Snoop Dogg. Perennially enveloped in a milky haze…

One of the most innovative electronic music acts to emerge from the ’90s, Autechre was one of the leaders of the IDM and glitch movements, styles that employ waves of static, mechanical bleeps and stuttering clicks to fashion cold, spooky soundscapes leavened by snatches of melody. The British duo’s chaotic…

On its seventh record, the Portland trio Sleater-Kinney finds itself in the same predicament as its heroes Sonic Youth and tour mates Pearl Jam: It’s honed its sound so precisely that it has to decide where to go next. With The Woods, the answers are jumping to indie-label heavyweight Sub…

While band-of-the-moment Franz Ferdinand and the opportunists in its wake are hyped as “dance rock,” Gang of Four, the cool-influence-of-the-moment, barely played rock at all, much less dance music. 1979’s Entertainment!, the debut of the now-reunited British quartet, is a trove of beguilingly tilted political songs, more alien to hoary…

Though they’re known for their laptop beat acrobatics, Canadian duo Junior Boys will actually be putting the needle on the records after their show with fellow Canuck Caribou on the evening of Saturday, May 21. The show with Caribou (recently known as Manitoba) is at Modified Arts, but the DJ…

It’s safe to call Ferret Music a metal and hardcore label. After all, the owner is the lead singer of NORA; the big band on the label is Every Time I Die; and Killswitch Engage got its start with Ferret. But somehow, Boys Night Out was scooped up by the…

All our favorite local bands play weekend shows. Unfortunately, the shows aren’t often at the same place. Traipsing from Tempe to Phoenix and back again in an attempt to catch more than one killer live set on a Friday night isn’t fun — at least not every weekend. But luckily,…

Troubled Hubble’s debut is something of a revival of the suburban psychedelia practiced by ’90s indie bands such as Pavement, but with a literate new twist. The Chicago-area quartet’s music is, characteristically, a weave of trebly guitars stitched with strings and eclectic snatches of sound. Singer Chris Otepka declaims up…

Twinkling bells, trembling guitars and tiny music boxes — these are the things that make up Golden Morning Breaks. A low and haunting piece of ambient music, Morning is the work of Colleen Schott, a French performer with a cut-and-paste approach. Often, this sort of delicate electronic music can be…